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Little Black Girls Are the New “Angry Black Women”: Race, Gender, and the School-to-Prison
Pipeline
(Another very interesting Blog)
Last week, 8-year-old Jmyha Rickman was handcuffed and held by police for two hours after throwing a temper tantrum at LoveJoy Elementary School in Alton, Illinois. On April 13, 2012, 6-year-old Salecia Johnson was handcuffed and arrested in her principal’s office and taken to a local police station in Milledgeville, Georgia for having a tantrum in her elementary school classroom. In May 2010, 13-year-old Olivia Raymond was arrested, accused of felony theft, and suspended in Chicago after finding her teacher’s sunglasses and attempting to return them to her. In September 2005, 14-year-old Shaquanda Cotton was arrested and later sentenced to up to 7 years in prison for shoving a hall monitor.
These are just four publicized examples of the hyper-disciplining and controlling of young black girls that recurrently takes place within the confines of the classrooms and hallways of many of our nation’s schools–incidences reflecting conditioned responses to the stereotype-driven “threat” and fear of black and brown bodies, particularly those of the mythical “angry black woman,” who functions as a walking, breathing embodiment of a threat to patriarchy. Oversimplified stereotypes once used to justify the rape and assault of black women during chattel slavery have trickled down to the bodies of our daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and little sisters, who are disproportionately disciplined in schools for being too “loud,” “unladylike,” “uncontrollable,” and “defiant.” Social justice advocate Monique W. Morris notes: “The behaviors for which black females routinely experience disciplinary response are related to their nonconformity with notions of white-middle class femininity, for example, by their dress, their profanity, or by having tantrums in the classroom.”
In the most recent example, 8-year-old, 70-pound Jmyha Rickman was handcuffed, hauled in the back of a police squad car, and taken to the local police station after throwing a temper tantrum in class. Jmyha was reportedly upset after her requests to use the bathroom were ignored. Instead of contacting a parent or guardian, school staff called the police, who restrained the little black girl donning ponytails and pink hair ballies. “Her eyes were swollen from crying,” Nehemiah Keeton, Jmyha’s guardian, tells KMOV-TV, “and her wrists had welts on them and they cuffed her feet too.” Alton police contend that Jmyha was put in a supervised juvenile detention room at the police station.
Regardless of the room in the police station in which a prepubescent girl was forced to sit and cry in while wearing shackles, the excessive, adult-like punishing of Jmyha Rickman is part of a broader problem manifesting in this current neoliberal moment, in which the needs of the market are met at the expense of democracy, public education, and responsibility toward the future. We are in a moment when many students of color are more likely to be policed, punished, and harassed in school than educated. Often framed as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” our debased education system is working in collaboration with the growing prison system to hyper-surveil and criminalize youth of color. Throughout the United States, black and Latino youths are disproportionately suspended, arrested, and expelled–these disproportional rates reminiscent of the disparities in incarceration rates of black and brown bodies. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, African-American students are over three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white counterparts, and over 70 percent of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement in the 2009-2010 school year were African-American or Hispanic.
These are just four publicized examples of the hyper-disciplining and controlling of young black girls that recurrently takes place within the confines of the classrooms and hallways of many of our nation’s schools–incidences reflecting conditioned responses to the stereotype-driven “threat” and fear of black and brown bodies, particularly those of the mythical “angry black woman,” who functions as a walking, breathing embodiment of a threat to patriarchy. Oversimplified stereotypes once used to justify the rape and assault of black women during chattel slavery have trickled down to the bodies of our daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and little sisters, who are disproportionately disciplined in schools for being too “loud,” “unladylike,” “uncontrollable,” and “defiant.” Social justice advocate Monique W. Morris notes: “The behaviors for which black females routinely experience disciplinary response are related to their nonconformity with notions of white-middle class femininity, for example, by their dress, their profanity, or by having tantrums in the classroom.”
In the most recent example, 8-year-old, 70-pound Jmyha Rickman was handcuffed, hauled in the back of a police squad car, and taken to the local police station after throwing a temper tantrum in class. Jmyha was reportedly upset after her requests to use the bathroom were ignored. Instead of contacting a parent or guardian, school staff called the police, who restrained the little black girl donning ponytails and pink hair ballies. “Her eyes were swollen from crying,” Nehemiah Keeton, Jmyha’s guardian, tells KMOV-TV, “and her wrists had welts on them and they cuffed her feet too.” Alton police contend that Jmyha was put in a supervised juvenile detention room at the police station.
Regardless of the room in the police station in which a prepubescent girl was forced to sit and cry in while wearing shackles, the excessive, adult-like punishing of Jmyha Rickman is part of a broader problem manifesting in this current neoliberal moment, in which the needs of the market are met at the expense of democracy, public education, and responsibility toward the future. We are in a moment when many students of color are more likely to be policed, punished, and harassed in school than educated. Often framed as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” our debased education system is working in collaboration with the growing prison system to hyper-surveil and criminalize youth of color. Throughout the United States, black and Latino youths are disproportionately suspended, arrested, and expelled–these disproportional rates reminiscent of the disparities in incarceration rates of black and brown bodies. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, African-American students are over three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white counterparts, and over 70 percent of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement in the 2009-2010 school year were African-American or Hispanic.
http://moorbey.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/little-black-girls-are-the-new-angry-black-women-race-gender-and-the-school-to-prison-pipeline/
7 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
This is just so, so sad.
Often framed as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” our debased education system is working in collaboration with the growing prison system to hyper-surveil and criminalize youth of color. Throughout the United States, black and Latino youths are disproportionately suspended, arrested, and expelled–these disproportional rates reminiscent of the disparities in incarceration rates of black and brown bodies. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, African-American students are over three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white counterparts, and over 70 percent of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement in the 2009-2010 school year were African-American or Hispanic.
That last stat is just boggling!
Someone I know casually, recently stated that he thought there was hardly any racism anymore. I had to pick my jaw off the floor. I reminded him that we live in a very affluent, liberal pocket & in most of America it's a lot different.
